(CNN) – Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied strained relations with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a press conference Wednesday.

"We work very closely with him and the US administration, with president Obama throughout this operation and before. The reports of the substance and the tone of our relationship are distorted," Netanyahu said.

But just last week, Netanyahu told Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro not to second-guess him on Hamas, sources told CNN, fueling indications of a tense relationship between Netanyahu and the Obama administration.

But a State Department spokesperson said the relationship is simply an "honest" one.FULL POST

(CNN) – The killing of Maj. Gen. Harold Greene in Afghanistan – the highest ranking officer to have been killed in that war, and the first time a general has been killed on the battlefield since Vietnam - has met with many statements mourning his loss, with one notable exception: the commander in chief.

Why?

A national security source tells CNN that the administration does not like to signal that the particular rank of a casualty merits a different response – every loss of life is equally tragic; every sacrifice is equally heartbreaking.

The source notes that President Obama has tended to go out to comment on military losses based more on when the U.S. loses a significant number of our troops – as when the helicopter was downed in the summer of 2011.

(CNN) – A man arrested in the kidnapping of three Israeli teens is a "senior member of Hamas," Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

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